StorageTek, Exabyte and Maxtor are long gone, but the storage industry is surging again on Colorado’s Front Range. A handful of startups have sprung up recently in the Boulder area bringing new technology to storage, which is being transformed by cloud computing and mobile communications.

John Spiers

The attraction? A deep bench of engineers and managers from the storage industry, many of whom are working for industry giants such as Sun Microsystems and Hewlett Packard, which acquired local storage companies. Others are working in other tech fields.

Boulder-based Standing Cloud, one of a growing number of Colorado startups specializing in cloud computing, says it has raised $3 million in new financing, bringing its total funding to $8 million.

The new funds came from existing Standing Cloud investors Foundry Group of Boulder and Avalon Ventures, which operates out of La Jolla, Calif., and Cambridge, Mass.

Brad Feld

Standing Cloud offers application-management services to cloud service providers. The company was founded in 2009 and is headed by Dave Jilk, founder of several Boulder companies and co-founder of Feld Technologies with Foundry Group managing partner Brad Feld.Read more…

A much-anticipated high-tech toy designed in Colorado is one step closer to hitting the market. Boulder-based Orbotix says it has begun making pre-sales of its Sphero, a smartphone-controlled robotic ball that has the tech press buzzing.

Watch Sphero in action in the above video from Orbotix. Is this thing the most expensive cat toy ever invented? Actually, Orbotix says Sphero comes with six phone apps, and that’s just the beginning since independent programmers can create new Sphero games.

For a better description of what Sphero can do and how it works, see this Macworld article.Read more…

Greenwood Village-based Ciber announced today that it posted an 8 percent drop in net income during the third quarter, .

The technology consulting and services firm reported a profit $3.1 million, or 4 cents a share, on revenue of nearly $271 million. During the same quarter a year ago the company posted a profit of $3.4 million on revenue of $266 million.Read more…

SolidFire, a cloud-computing storage company that moved to Boulder from the Atlanta area in May to tap talent from the data-storage industry, has raised $25 million in a second funding round.

Dave Wright

It brings to $37 million the amount of venture capital that SolidFire, launched less than two years ago, has raised this year. The new investment comes from New Enterprise Associates, Valhalla Partners, Novak Biddle and several individual investors from the data-storage industry.

SolidFire is founder Dave Wright’s third startup. In 2008 he sold his previous company, Jungle Disk, to Rackspace. He assembled SolidFire’s team from Boulder’s LeftHand Networks (now part of HP) and other storage companies.Read more…

What do you get when you put together a seasoned Boulder entrepreneur and a dogged Denver PR man? In the case of Dave DuPont and James Wall, the result is a growing Internet startup with a story to tell.

DuPont

Boulder-based TeamSnap is an online service that helps sports teams and other groups communicate, manage schedules, share photos, track game statistics and coordinate refreshments and other activities

The 2-year-old company said today that it has raised $910,000 in new funding from a group including Silicon Valley-based Trinity Ventures and Denver-based eonBusiness.

Wall

It comes after an angel round of $700,000 last year from eonBusiness and individual investors.

“There are 100 million participants in recreational sports in the U.S. alone, and just 70 percent of our business now comes from States. There’s tremendous potential for growth, and our investors obviously felt the same way,” DuPont says. “Ultimately what we are doing is making millions of people’s lives easier around the world.”Read more…

The maker of electric buses and related systems — which is moving its headquarters from Golden to Greenville, S.C. — says it has secured $15 million in working and growth capital from Silicon Valley Bank. The capital infusion follows $37.7 million in investments in the company made during the second quarter by General Motors Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and others.

Proterra says the money will “help finance existing orders and new sales, and it will help extend financial runway to Proterra’s next round of venture capital financing.”

Rally Software CEO Tim Miller. The Boulder company received a capital infusion from an SBA-licensed investment firm.

Colorado ranked No. 9 in the amount of capital investments made in fiscal 2011 through the SBA’s Small Business Investment Company program — which is basically an SBA-regulated venture-capital fund administered by private investment firms.

Businesses in Colorado received $100 million during the year, compared to $399 million for those in California and $297 for Texas, the top two states. Right behind Colorado were New Jersey, with $97 million, and Georgia at $96 million.Read more…

Louisville-based Sundrop Fuels received $35.9 million and Boulder Wind Power took $35 million, of a total Colorado investment of $157.6 million, PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association said in their quarterly report released late Tuesday. Two other clean-tech companies raked in $10.7 million.

It was the second consecutive quarter in which clean tech cleaned up the venture capital invested in Colorado. During the second quarter, clean-tech companies took $114.2 million of a total VC investment of $208 million in the state.

“That’s an important sector for this market,” said Keith Parsons, lead partner for PwC’s Colorado Technology and Cleantech practice.Read more…

Advanced communications service is a priority for tenants choosing office space, according to a survey by Comcast Business Class.

Ninety percent of building owners and managers surveyed say that access to advanced communications services ranks as most important only after price, parking and location.

The survey of 500 building owners and property managers also found that 61 percent believe that having advanced communications in their buildings provides them with a competitive advantage; and one of every two respondents said providing multiple service provider options positively impacts occupancy rates.

Emilie Rusch covers retail and commercial real estate for The Post. A Wisconsin native and Mizzou graduate, she moved to Colorado in 2012. Before that, she worked at a small daily newspaper in South Dakota. It's the one with Mount Rushmore.